"There They Go Again"—bad reporting and plenty of ignorance and apathy

Meet the late Mr. A. Pavlov, a "pro-Russian separatist" according to the media, but he was really a Russian citizen who went to Ukraine to fight Ukrainians. Yet he becomes a "pro-Russian separatist" because "most media coverage of Ukraine still comes through Moscow bureaus."

Journalism, especially investigative and local investigative journalism, is dying everywhere. And the world is becoming stupider and more easily manipulated by large media operations because of it.

But, let's just say all the free nations of the world, following the BBC model, decided non-governmental but mostly or totally taxpayer-funded corporations would be charted to conduct such laudable work using more robust resources the taxes/fees facilitated.

Would anybody watch it, read it, listen to it?

Few will in a world where the vast majority of people would rather watch reality TV, care nothing at all about politics unless it is sufficiently entertaining (e.g., appalling, funny, bizarre), and—especially in the U.S.A.—have the geography skills and civic engagement of a tuber.

Second, the widespread cynicism about politics, which is the result in large part of antiquated and opaque party systems, political cronyism, rank partisanship (e.g., everything from ad hominem rhetoric to gerrymandering) and the chumminess of political, corporate, and media elites in the U.S. and globally. Younger would-be voters seen enough of this to be totally turned off by politics, somewhat understandably.

To a lesser extent, these things turns them off of global affairs, too, though I belief the educational system and media fragmentation are more to blame for that.